Monday, June 09, 2008

I'm sure most of you read or heard last Friday but Bill Plaschke wrote the Paul Pierce faked his Game One injury and even went so far as to label it "WWE-like" in its execution. Obviously Boston fans were upset, and let him have a piece of their mind. Plaschke wrote a detailed piece yesterday about some of the comments and it's pretty hilarious. Here's a section....

"You disgust me. You are a whore." Virtually all the vile missives were from angry Celtics fans, who weren't content to enjoy their team's opening victory in the NBA Finals against the Lakers.

"Die, you lily-livered ass." Are we in Boston or Deadwood?

"I wonder how many dried-up spit stains you've got on that cheap tie of yours, you stuttering, stammering slob."

"You better have extra security with you Sunday because Celtic fans who recognize you from ESPN will want to take a slap at you, and if I were there, I know I would."

Of all the humanity-questioning notes, the most disturbing was apparent from a subject line that contained three words that could not be printed in this newspaper.

Then the writer really got mad.

"I hope you . . . get cancer and die," he wrote. "Why don't you just die or quit, you ugly fat (bleep). I'm going to find out where (a relative) is buried and me and my buddies are gonna dig (the) skeleton up."

I guess these are the responses you get when you call one of the best players on a team that hasn't been relevant in quite some time a faker. The rest of the article details his responses and interaction with some of the folks and is actually a good read (if you can stand one sentence paragraphs). I just thought the collection of responses was just too funny not to post here. People are so brave when writing emails. It's like the new liquid courage and it's very entertaining, well that and a little scary at times.

These people do not speak for real Celtics fans. I'm disgusted by the actions, behavior and attitude that the band wagon jumpers have put on during the playoffs. I've been to around 5 playoff games this year and it seems to be getting worse and worse as we keep winning. The Hawks series they throwing clever insults at Bibby and Pachulia and booing appropriately. Game 7 of the Cavs series may have been the most sincere crowd reactions I've witnessed in my life as a Celtics fan (I can barely remember back to 1994 and 1995 so I haven't been able to experience all that much success to cheer about).

But then the Detroit series came and we started seeing the replays of the fights that the Bad Boys and the Big Three used to get into. We were fed video after video of Parish punching Lambier and Larry tossing the ball at his head. The fans tried to take on that persona, but in an extremely obnoxious way. It was the epitome of frat boy party behavior and it made me sick to be a Celtics fan.

Then this Lakers series came and the fan-boys were getting even worse. My brother witnessed a bathroom full of drunk "fans" from their teens to their mid 30s chanting vulgarities at a 12 or 13 year old kid in a Kobe Bryant jersey. Which made me even more sick about the reputation of the Boston "fan."

For the record, Lakers fans in attendance were probably worse, but you won't read about them because they were vastly outnumbered. I saw a group of 3 lakers fans practically challenging and entire section of Boston followers to a fight as they were escorted out for trying to fight a guy sitting courtside for some, what appeared to be, good natured ribbing.

But that's beside the point. I just want everyone on here to know that this represents the bandwagon fans. Not the fans that have lived and died (well mostly died) with this team for the better part of their lives. I hate to do the "I was a fan during the Rick Pitino years, the ML Carr years, blah blah blah..." but it's true and I am disgusted by the so-called Boston "fans" these days.

Every fan base...I repeat EVERY fan base has fans like these. those who say they hate Boston or that is why I hate Boston - whatever should remember that they too have fans that would act the same way.

Now as to the article itself personally I don't think it is out of line for him to write that article, being that he is on the West Coast....everyone out there that is a Laker fan is thinking it.

Had the same thing happened to Kobe the Boston fans would have wanted Bob Ryan to write that same kind of article that Bill wrote.

Plaschke's a hack writer. If he had any integrity himself, or wrote things that bore scrutiny, or if he were even capable of putting together a paragraph containing more than 1-2 sentences (who the hell does he think he is, Maureen "the Pulitzers are obviously a joke" Dowd?), then he'd be in mildly better stead. But he's not. He's a rabble-rouser, a guy who writes the contrarian, ill-considered quasi-shock-value column because someone on the LA Times has to.

You should just call this post "douchebags call another douchebag a douchebag". That'd sum it up. After all, this is the guy who routinely writes articles about how Juan Pierre should be a major league starter.

I have a bit of a unique perspective on this as I'm a long-time Dodgers fan who lived in Boston for 7 years, yet doesn't care about either NBA team.

The verdict is: Bill Plashke is an asshole. There's no other way around it. He IS a hack. He writes these awful articles (which almost always have the paragraphs be one sentence) that do nothing but inflame people and serve his own ends.

He was almost singlehandedly responsible for running Paul DePodesta out of town because he hates stats and because DePo traded Plashke's working class hero, Paul LoDuca (which turned out to be a great trade for LA).

they sound like University of Kentucky basketball fans if you don't call them the absolute, without a doubt, most phenomenal basketball program in the entire universe...and I can say that as a UK basketball fan